Combining our own demographic intelligence across the Council with the Community Wellbeing Index, has allowed for a better understanding of the communities within Rochdale, enabling us to gain greater insight into the issues that matter most across the borough.

Ben Jorgensen, Data Innovation & Intelligence Manager at Rochdale Borough Council

How Rochdale Borough Council use data

At Rochdale Borough Council, we use data and intelligence in many different ways; whether to support funding bids, to improve service delivery, to understand our communities or to complete statutory returns. We have data analysts based across different services, with a small corporate intelligence centre. At present this service faces challenges around providing proactive intelligence, against the backdrop of having limited staff and budgetary capacity.

Using data to improve intelligence within the local authority

One of the wider impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, was that senior leaders within the local authority saw first-hand how data and intelligence could support our community response. Understanding our communities and neighbourhoods has been vital in order to direct services and to support the population of Rochdale.

To continue to improve intelligence; neighbourhood ward profiles were developed by the Council’s research and intelligence team. This included bringing data together from a wide variety of sources in order to build and develop a coherent demographic picture of areas across the borough. Particular focus was given to population, housing, economy, crime, health and deprivation.

After being introduced to the Community Wellbeing Index (CWI), it made sense to utilise the insight within our ward profiles. The data was cut into wards and then added to the profiles, allowing the audience additional information regarding wellbeing. The wide range of themes within the CWI, from the quality of education and transport links within an area, to the amount of green space and the number of community centres that are present, helped provide a useful snapshot into the strengths of different communities and also the challenges that they are facing.

Next Steps

Going forward, we want to ensure that our key stakeholders, including partner organisations, actively use the intelligence documents we create to help support and successfully improve overall service delivery.

Additionally the ward profiles, including CWI data, will be provided to any new Councillors following elections, allowing them to quickly understand the communities that they are representing.  Officers and Councillors will also be directed to the CWI website, where they will be able to self-serve and interrogate the data.

Combining our own demographic intelligence across the Council with the Community Wellbeing Index has allowed for a better understanding of the communities within Rochdale, enabling us to gain greater insight into the issues that matter most across the borough.

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